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Dispatches from the War on Horny: Has the popular Japanese website Pixiv been colonized by the Western Social-Financial-Complex?
Today (well, yesterday as I write this), Pixiv announced that, in cooperation with Visa and MasterCard's policies (well, okay, they say "Brand Protections of Card Networks," but you probably know what that really means and which card networks they're referring to), they will be forbidding certain content from their Booth, Fanbox, and Request services--of note is "sexual exploitation of a minor." If you aren't already, sit down and get (un)comfortable, this is going to take some explaining.
Now, because of the recent Twitter shenanigans, you may have come across these blog posts by Matthew Skala and Ethan Zuckerman about Pawoo, Pixiv's Mastodon instance, and both its sheer popularity as well as how comfortable its userbase is with lolicon content (and how that makes other Mastodon instances chafe). Well, loli content is once again the source of conflict over at Pixiv, and the East-vs.-West dimension seems like it's also at play here.
The new guidelines seem tailor-made to ban loli and guro (AKA gore) content (which, as a reminder, is fictional art), with the former being, well, just plainly popular for what is likely a whole bunch of cultural reasons I can't get into here. While these guidelines focus on payment-based services that Pixiv provides (Booth is a storefront akin to Gumroad or Storenvy or Etsy, Fanbox is a subscription service akin to Patreon, and I presume Request is Pixiv's equivalent to Skeb, a website for commissioning artists), it's not inconceivable to think that this will sooner or later also apply to the regular art-sharing side of Pixiv, the main site itself.
While I can't really link to them (or at least the Sankaku article collating them), there's already some reactions from Japanese users suggesting that Pixiv will have a Tumblr Porn Ban situation on their hands, as users pre-emptively flee the site before they get kicked off and leave for competitors like Nijie (another art-sharing site) and Fantia (another subscription platform).
One other reaction has been to ask "why not avoid this conflict?", as Pixiv could either just not use Visa/MasterCard (like what competing site DMM did), or, more feasibly, implement workarounds like using points purchased with credit cards (like what DLSite and deviantArt do), or even adopt crypto payments. However, it's also likely that Pixiv is completely fine with this, and here's where things get spicy:
Oddly enough, a few months ago, Pixiv instituted DEI-type policies and sensitivity training, which I presume is quite the rare thing to see from a Japanese company. Now, without going way "beyond the wire" epistemically, it does seem like Pixiv has somehow picked up the Western memes of DEI and incorporated them. This likely made them more open to playing by the rules of Visa and MasterCard, not just on paper, but also spiritually. But, again, I don't want to get too into the weeds of cultural colonialism from the West--it could just be that Pixiv really wants the money that flows through the Visa/MC networks and aren't too willing to rock the boat on this matter. I don't think this is the newest form of imposed American hegemony on the Japanese way of life, like Commodore Perry or the post-WWII occupation and reforms (which arguably built the environment that allowed hentai and lolicon to emerge in the first place), but it kinda does feel like it. (Though see also)
There is certainly no shortage of culture-war red meat when it comes to the modern culture clash between America and Japan WRT general social justice issues, from how Japanese Twitter's trending tab was populated by politics and similar current events until Musk took over, to the aforementioned Mastodon/Pawoo conflict where both sides were of completely different mindsets, and the various controversies over censorship and localization with Crunchyroll's anime distribution and Sony's treatment of Japanese games.
And of course, I don't think I need to re-link articles about Visa vs. PornHub or Patreon restricting adult content or so on. You might already be familiar with how PayPal and the credit card companies basically ban porn and other adult content (citing its high risk of chargebacks), whether outright or through sheer inconvenience (there was a comment I saw recently about how a medium-tier/size payment processor for a porn site had to keep re-routing around damage in the form of network bans, plus also the little things like not being able to use PayPal for some sites and services). Financial deplatforming comes in second or third place to regular social media deplatforming in terms of how often it gets discussed, but it's not very far behind.
Just from the practical/ethical standpoint, PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard are so huge and dominant that they probably should just be common carriers, especially considering the non-NSFW areas where they have influence (namely speech and such; dissident shitposters and Russians are probably well-aware of this reality). PayPal can freeze your account and hold onto your money for no good reason (and you especially better hope they don't catch wind of you doing sex work or selling NSFW art commissions), and your only option is to enter arbitrage, if you can.
But there's also the poltical dimension of this: these three companies are part of the massive American/global financial hegemon, able to kick off actors and users at-will, whether they be lowly prostitutes or even entire countries. Having one large actor dominate much of the world's wealth is very likely bad on its own, but the pay-to-play ESG corporatism being used to draw the lines of social acceptability is extra-worrying. The anti-porn policies of 1st-world payment processing may be rooted in social conservatism, but they play nicely with the liberal-progressive strong-arming many worry about. For any country more worried about losing access to international money because they crossed some cultural or social red-line of the West, there are only three options: embrace crypto (and subject yourself to the non-stop boom-and-bust cycles it suffers from), voluntarily disconnect from the global finance system (with all the hard work that entails), or admit that we all live in America.
EDIT: Since this kicked off a whole sub-thread in response to Hlynka, I would just like to state for the record that while I don't really care for Lolicon at all, I am fully aware that it will likely not stop there, and even an otherwise vanilla-but-still-NSFW image might eventually not be allowed. Slippery slopes, Murder-Ghandis, "the line must be drawn here," "first they came for..." etc.
I know this is probably going to come across as uncharitable I find it difficult to get mad about about pedos and gore fetishists getting forced underground, if anything this strikes me as one of the DEI/LGBTQ/BBQ movements few redeeming qualities.
ロリコン is not the same as 児童ポルノ, they're treated extremely differently in Japan and one is unmistakable for the other. Which, in fact, is the original reason that that stuff ended up on Mastodon, because the ideologically Californian people that ran twitter at the time couldn't fathom Japanese culture being okay with Californian taboos.
But yeah sure, support people who hate you and everything that you are because they might do some harm to people who are loosely affiliated in your mind with other people you hate. See where that gets you.
I kind of find this comment ironic since in any other context, most of the people spewing at @HlynkaCG would probably be on Team Burn the Pedos, but if they're pissing off SJWs, then they are defended without reservation.
(And I find the attempts to scrupulously differentiate "loli" from "actual" pedophilia unconvincing. Like, sure, I get that a lot of these guys just like really cute... really... young girls and may not literally be pedophiles in the clinical sense. But again, that's not a distinction the anti-woke crowd would accept in any kind of role-reversal. If we found out some prominent leftist was really into ロリコン, LibsOfTikTok would be all over it.)
The response here to the revelation that several scientists who write the WPATH recommendations regarding the treatment of transsexuality in children, were regulars on a castration fetish forum, wasn't that such a forum shouldn't be allowed to exist.
Not here, no, the norms here would push against such a statement. But I'd be willing to bet if I went looking in right-wing forums it wouldn't be hard to find such sentiments. I'd also be willing to bet that quite a few of the rightists here, if actually given the power, would ban castration fetishist forums (and a lot of other things). More than one has admitted as much.
Are you really going to argue against imaginary rightwingers so you don't have to address the arguments of people here?
If we actually look at the actual arguments of people who are actually here, it's weird to see the shift away from "woah there: you can't prove they're castration fetishists just because they administer a castration fetish website and write castration fetish porn, and who's to say if there's anything wrong with them basing medical treatment for children off of content from said fetish website."
At least they weren't drawing lewd cartoons, I guess. Apparently that's much worse and doesn't require any of the same charity.
I am addressing the arguments of people here. I believe some (not all) of the people here are not committed in any principled way to free speech, especially not that of people whom they would normally call pedos regardless of the strict accuracy of the term. I believe they are reacting firstly to "the enemy of my enemy" and secondly to "someone I don't like said something."
(If this is not you, then it is not you.)
I don't know who you are referring to here. Certainly not me or @HlynkaCG, so who is the defender of castration fetishists who's now criticizing lolicon?
Again, who are you referring to? I don't recall seeing anyone saying that lewd cartoons are worse.
I did not note in my original post (because I try to avoid unnecessary throat-clearing disclaimers) that I don't actually agree with Hlynka entirely. My own personal view is that castration fetishists and lolicon fans are deeply weird and creepy, but they should be left alone so long as they aren't actually touching children. I would not censor either one legally. But I agree with him a little - I think the weird, creepy fetishists should keep that shit to themselves and not encourage its normalization.
The thing I posted in this thread which seems to have you so upset was not a lack of charity for lolicon. It was an observation that it's ironic to see people say "That's weird and gross" or "That's free expression that only humorless puritans would object to" depending entirely on whose fetish is being indulged.
Who's the attacker of castration fetishists who's now defending lolicon? I'm prepared to believe that people hold such a position, but is anyone actually doing it?
...I think you and the person you're responding to are both going off a vibe that is both real and not terribly quantifiable. One gets the general sense that the other side isn't objecting enough on a specific topic, no? There's a sense that, while the literal meaning of the statements might be roughly equivalent, they're masking some deeper disagreement, perhaps intentionally. That about the size of it?
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